Aussies Primo! only strengthen their hold on me with the release of their second album for Upset The Rhythm — a cracking burst of post-punk that’s somehow both tightly wound and about to unravel at the same time. The sound is raw, not underproduced by any means, but not shined to please the masses either. The chords whack into the listener, crunching bones like a solid piece of timber broken in two —jagged but effective all the same. Aesthetics aside, the band’s got a good grip of hooks under the hood and they drive Sogni as hard as their last album. The guitars stretch with elasticity, crunch with a crinkle, drive breezily and then stutter-stop with glee. The bass comes atcha from all sides, formidable but still hungry. The band’s sound has space built in and nothing suffocates, even if it dominates. Tack on some three-part harmonies that jostle just a bit atop the whip-crack of drums and the album feels like its been hiding in the stacks for more than a few years.
That’s the real charm, and one that they’d employed on their last album as well. Primo! know their influences and they wear them well. The album could easily slip between the shelf-worn brittleness of Kleenex, Oh-OK, and Pylon but they don’t commit to one corner of the post-punk playground for too long. The sound skips from the pogo-pop of “Machine” to the rubber-legged saunter of “Rolling Stone” and never sounds out of sync with itself. The band shares two members with Aussie upstarts Terry, and there’s certainly a crossover appeal, but they come out like a softer, slyer version of the pop upset created within the confines of Terry. The lowered barriers make it a more sinister sister album to Terry’s last. Once inside the confines of Sogni the band’s no less cutting but they’ve already burrowed under your skin and once they’re in there, its impossible to shake ‘em.
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